i'm gonna be
by emazings
Summary: the new york skyline is beautiful and lonely. / chuck after 5x10 (season 5 spoilers)


**a/n: **set before 5x11, after the car accident. inspired by the sleeping at last version of i'm gonna be (500 miles).

kind of a chuck/blair fic, but mostly a chuck fic.

..

..

[_i'm gonna be the man that's lonely without you_]

The New York skyline is beautiful and lonely. It doesn't usually feel lonely, but the city feels especially melancholic today, like a broken-hearted man walking down the streets.

It is his first day out of the hospital, and his first day back at the Empire, and the skyline is lonely. So lonely that it is crying for him, crying for the man who can barely find the strength to blink away the tears puddling in his eyes.

His clothes fit oddly, too loose from the weight he lost in the hospital, and Chuck's whole frame is sagging under his clothes, and he feels like a rag doll, no life left in him.

He swears, he can still smell her. But even her dresses, left over from when she used to spend the night, don't smell like her anymore.

She's not even in the country. She's in Europe, and her smell is lingering in European bakeries and royal vaults, and for goodness sake, what right does Chanel No.5 have to be in his penthouse?

Maybe it's not really the skyline that is lonely. Maybe the skyline is exactly the way it used to be. (Or maybe even Manhattan cannot help but cry for a broken boy.)

..

..

[_I'm gonna dream about the time when I'm with you._]

He had nightmares about her, back when he was stuck on that uncomfortable cot and in a flimsy hospital gown, but maybe they were just dreams; Chuck doesn't know. All he knows, is that he still has them. And he can't blame them on the mattress he's sleeping on or the clothes he's in; he can only blame himself. And her. In a sick, twisted way.

In his dreams, he is next to her in Paris, and she is in that damn red dress, the one that he reached for when he was in bed with Eva, the one he envisioned when he saw Raina's closet, and he is in those horrible workman's clothes. They are holding hands, and she is smiling at him, the way she used to, before he broke everything the first time, and he is smiling back at her, like he always has.

And it is a dream, it most definitely is, until he's awake and she's not next to him, and he feels all cold inside and outside, and then it is a nightmare.

When he tells his therapist about them, he has this wistful smile on his face, because yes, it is terrible to see her and have her torn away, but at least he gets to see her. It is better than nothing, no Gossip Girl, no texts, no calls.

Chuck is struck with the thought that he is a masochistic, but no, he isn't addicted to pain, he's just addicted to her.

..

..

[_I'm gonna be the man who's working hard for you / And when the money comes in for the work I do / I'll pass almost every penny on to you._]

He doesn't know how much money he spends in those months. Nate has to talk him out of hiring a P.I. so Chuck spends on other things. He buys Monkey thirteen different leashes, he spends a thousand dollars on pillowcases from the Netherlands, and he stares at the display at Tiffany's, knowing that if he could, he would buy it all for her.

But it doesn't matter, because he might have all the money in the world, but Louis is the one with the title, and the one with Blair.

His assistant eventually talks him out of getting another pair of cufflinks, the eighth in two weeks, and it breaks him out of his stupor. Money won't do anything to get her back, and Chuck doesn't know why he let himself think that.

(that's a lie. he knows. of course he knows. he hangs on to every little thread of hope he can.)

[_And I would walk five hundred miles / And I would walk five hundred more / Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles / To fall down at your door._]

He gets drunk one day, drunk in a way he usually doesn't get anymore, and his help is useless now, honestly, because Arthur refuses to drive him to the Waldorf penthouse, and the night manager is hesitant to even let him out the door, but all he wants is to be near her. Or as near to her as he can get.

He walks to her apartment, a little bit surprised he doesn't get lost, and a little bit hopeless.

Dorota lets him in, even though she clucks her tongue and shakes her head at the sight of him. She says that she's cleaning up, and was just about to go home, and Chuck almost leaves, but he can't bring himself to, so he lets Dorota make him a cup of coffee and sit at the kitchen island with him.

He can feel himself sobering up as he drinks the coffee, and when he can finish it, he can almost stand up straight, so really, there's no excuse for why he stumbles up the stairs and leans his head on her bedroom door.

Dorota said Serena was out, with her mother for the night or something, and he is glad, because that means that there is nobody to watch him breathe in the smell of home. Every place he has been to since the accident has felt empty, every single place, but this one is so Blair Waldorf that it occupies a place in his heart that warms his hands.

He doesn't open the door. He's scared to see Louis' jacket on the chair, a baby book on the desk, or something else that will inevitably break his heart. So Chuck tiptoes out and he avoids Dorota's eyes and calls Arthur to pick him up as his back is against the wall in front of her building.

Memories of satin headbands, and a ring being twisted by his fingers, and Chuck shakes his head. The city will not cry for him anymore. He is Chuck Bass, and he will get through this.

He has too.

..

..


End file.
